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[June 18, 2003]1

Jonathan awoke to an odd, peculiar sound. A sound that is hard for one to describe. Perhaps it resembled the low humming sound of someone vacuuming on the floor above you. That doesn't quite describe it though. You see, it was a lower tone than a vacuum. The muffled quality of the sound is what leads one to think of a vacuum from the floor above, but there was another side to this. The lower tone of the sound is more akin to... well... it's hard to say really. 2

It was a deep, constant, muffled humming and it was coming from inside his home. From which direction, he was not quite sure. He knew that it was definitely not in his bedroom, seeing as he was sitting up in his bed. The most odd piece of this was that his two cats, Addy & Icarus, were still asleep. How could the cats not be hearing this? Why were they not already off investigating the humming? Now, anyone that has cats, or has spent any substantial time around cats, knows that there is a reason for the phrase "curious as a cat." Cats are always checking everything out. The fact that both cats were not only on the bed but also asleep left Jonathan quite perplexed. Could they honestly not hear it? At that thought, goosebumps began to crawl across his body. Something in the air was not right.3

Jonathan threw his comforter and sheets off of himself, startling the two cats sleeping at the end of his bed. Icarus hopped off and ran under a dresser while Addy meowed and went back to sleep, half hidden by the bed covers. Normally this would be an amusing site to Jonathan except that he was somewhat distracted this morning. Oddly, the cats still paid the sound no attention. 4

Jonathon quickly threw on the pajama pants his girlfriend, Sheena, had given him last Christmas and an old pair of slippers before heading out of his room. He hated walking around barefoot. The cats would track small amounts of litter anywhere they went and the feeling of this on the bottoms of his feet was something he could not stand. Comparable to scraping fingernails across a chalkboard. 5

As Jonathan headed out of the bedroom he noticed that the humming now sounded a bit lower in tone than it did before. It was still constant, just lower. He grabbed the door knob on his bedroom door to pull the door open. The knob was neither wet nor frosty, yet it was frigidly cold. It felt as if it had been sitting in the freezer for the past eight hours he had been sleeping. This made about as little sense as the door being closed. Why was the door closed? He always slept with the door open. The cats had to be able to go back and forth to their litter box. He knew he had not closed it.6

Jonathan paused now, at the door. He was not sure what to do next. Too many things were out of whack. The cats could not, so it seemed, hear the noise. The door to his bedroom had been completely closed during the night. The doorknob was extremely cold and it was the middle of June. The only one of these occurrences he could perhaps write-off was the door being closed. The cats could have been playing and knocked it closed. Only, in the past they didn't get the door closed completely, and he generally woke up to the sound of them bumping into it. He knew this could not be from them bumping into the door. He definitely would have woken up in the night to the sound of the door closing. A cold sweat had joined the goosebumps across Jonathan's now shivering body. What was going on? He pinched himself, in hopes that he could possibly be dreaming still. No luck, it hurt. He was still standing there shivering, with no shirt on. 7

He ran back across his room to grab the a sweatshirt that hung in his closet. He couldn't understand why he was cold and shivering. Yes, he was freaked out, but it wasn't as if it was cold in his
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home. He suddenly realized he could see his breath. Was it cold? What was going on? He had not noticed a chill when he jumped out of his bed but now it was as if it was around 35 degrees in his room. He threw open the heavy cloth curtains that covered his window and looked outside. Everything looked normal as far as he could see. When he placed his hand against the glass it felt warm with the mid-summer heat he had expected to wake up to. Condensation had begun to form on the glass now that he had pulled the curtains out of the way. The outside world began to disappear behind a veil of foggy moisture that now clung to the glass as the inner coolness met the outside's arid heat. Each side guarded by the clear wall of glass which Jonathan could no longer see through. He felt trapped. Even worse, he had no idea why and no clue what the hell was going on outside his room in the rest of the house. All he knew is that noise wasn't stopping and he felt like it was going to drive him absolutely insane.9

“I... When they.... Keep..... Now!!!” 10

“What the hell?!”, yelped Jonathan as he jumped and spun around so fast that he almost tripped over himself. Had he really just heard that? He could swear he just heard men yelling broken sentences somewhere outside his bedroom. They sounded scared and urgent. The last few months had been rough. School had taken its toll on him during the spring semester. Was he finally cracking? Was he officially losing it? The voices had sounded distant and as if they were broken up by static. Reminiscent of the voices on walkie-talkies in old war movies.11

“If someone is out there, will you answer me?!” He suddenly felt stupid. Why would they answer him? If they were in his house they had obviously broken in and were trying to get out. Addy stared at him in surprise from the bed and Icarus poked his head out from under the dresser. 12

“I'm going crazy... that's what's happening. It's a perfectly nice June morning and here I am standing in pajama pants and a sweatshirt thinking it's 35 degrees in here. I'm also hearing voices and humming sounds! I'm going nuts!” Jonathan's head started to hurt a bit. He could not make sense of anything that was going on. He wondered if he should maybe call someone. He turned to his nightstand where he always charged his cellphone at night. It wasn't there. Where was his cellphone? 13

“Damnit, I must have left it on the coffee table again. Why do I do that? It's always dead by the morning when I leave it in the living room.” Now he realized he would have to leave the room in order to get his cellphone if he was going to call anyone. He briefly considered climbing out his window and using the neighbor's phone but then realized how crazy that would look. He decided that, since he was obviously losing his mind, he needed to stay put as best he could. He would go get his cellphone and ignore all of the crazy happenings his apparently neurotic mind was making up. It would be simple. Open the door, step out of the bedroom, walk to the living room, grab the phone off the coffee table, and come back to the bedroom to plug in the cell phone so he could call someone to take him to a doctor's office. 14

“...aaaah! ….will he.... …where?!”15

Jonathan collapsed on the floor and curled into the fetal position. Was he not losing his mind? Was he truly experiencing this? Which option sounded better? He wasn't really too sure about the answer to the latter question. As for the two former questions, he felt that no he was not losing his mind and yes he was truly experiencing this. It was too real. It was definitely freezing in his room and
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he was definitely hearing voices and that... incessant... humming sound. 17

He was suddenly unable to focus. The humming felt as though it were penetrating his brain. It felt as though the sound was coming from within him. Working its way into each individual neuron. What was this sound?? He could not begin to think. All he could focus on was the humming. The dreadful humming. 18

It had begun to exude a sort of pulsating, wave-like feel. He had not felt this when he woke up, or even one minute ago. It was as if the sound was shifting the actual particles of matter all around him. He even thought he could feel his own skin begin to move about to the rhythmic pulsing. Jonathan was not a religious man anymore, yet he wondered if the world was perhaps ending? He had no clue. Whatever was going on was about to drive him beyond the limits of sanity. He would not be able to take it much longer.19

It stopped.20

Jonathan still lay in the fetal position. He realized it was quiet and that he was no longer cold. In fact, he was beginning to get hot. The temperature had returned to the room and the sweatshirt was beginning to make him sweat due to the heat it was providing. 21

“What the...?”, said Jonathan. 22

“What in the hell is happening? First I think I'm losing my mind. Then I realize I'm not. Now I feel like I really am losing my mind.” 23

Jonathan sat into an upright position and stared about the room. Everything seemed normal and in its place. Even stranger, everything felt normal. It wasn't cold. The humming had stopped. 24

He stood up and looked out the window. The condensation was gone. The day was just as beautiful as before when he had peered out the window in fear. 25

Something brushed his leg, causing Jonathan to yell out in shock. He jumped and spun, nearly kicking whatever had brushed his leg as it scurried behind the bed. 26

Fear and panic began to replace the sense of confusion and ease that had begun to take over his mind. Suddenly he heard a rustle from behind the bed. Then a soft meow. Jonathan breathed. 27

“The cats.... man....”, he said as he walked around to the other side of the bed.28

There lay Addy and Icarus. Confused-looking, but likely from his reaction to their previous affection. 29

“You furballs... you scared the shit out of me! Did you not hear any of that stuff going on? Maybe I did just imagine it. I have no clue but everything feels fine now.”